Scream and Shout
by Hi Pot And News
Summary: AU. Don't-give-an-eff!Fem!Harry. Starts during OOTP. Marie's been having a frustrating summer, a frustration that she tries to relieve in perhaps not the most sensible way. But she doesn't care. She's tired of caring. Screw being the hero for those fickle people, Marie was going to take care of number one.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **Hello, all. For this story, you're going to have to suspend your disbelief in some places. I made the internet more prominent than it probably actually was during '96 and implied that Youtube had already been created. I _know _that Youtube was created in 2005; please don't fuss at me about it. For the sake of my story, let's pretend otherwise.

Also, if you're one of those that are following one of my other stories . . . well, sorry about the wait. I was typing up another chapter for Picture Perfect when I was body-slammed by several plot bunnies all at once. In fact, I'm compelled to call them hares instead of bunnies since _none_ of them are short one-shots. I was even struck with an idea for an original children's book. I _did _warn ya'll that updates will be sporadic.

**DISCLAIMER: **This is the only disclaimer for the entire story so pay attention if it means a lot to you. I don't own anything you recognize and even some of the things you _don't _recognize. I'll mostly include things from other stories that enjoyed so I'll apologize for that beforehand but I _will _give credit where it's due if I remember exactly what story I'm borrowing from.

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**T**he hottest day of the summer so far was nearly at its end and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive. Cars that were usually gleaming stood dusty in their drives and lawns that were once emerald green lay parched and yellowing; the use of hose-pipes had been banned due to drought. Deprived of their usual car-washing and lawn-mowing pursuits, the inhabitants of Privet Drive had retreated into the shade of their cool houses, windows thrown wide in the hope of tempting in a non-existent breeze. The only person left outdoors was a teenage girl who was lying flat on her back in a flower bed outside Number Four.

She was a thin, black-haired, bespectacled girl who had the awkward look of someone who has grown a lot in a short space of time and was still getting used to the changes. Her jean shorts were torn and faded, her cropped T-shirt hung off her shoulders, and her sandals were worn so thin, she had opted to stuff them into her back pocket and just go bare-foot instead. Marie Potter's appearance did not endear her to the neighbours, who were the sort of people who thought scruffiness ought to be punishable by law, but as she had hidden herself behind a large hydrangea bush this evening she was quite invisible to passersby. In fact, the only way she would be spotted was if her Uncle Vernon or Aunt Petunia stuck their heads out of the living room window and looked straight down into the flower bed below.

Speaking of her Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia —

"Glad to see the girl's stopped butting in," Uncle Vernon said, his voice drifting through the open window. "Where is she, anyway?"

"I don't know," Aunt Petunia replied, sounding not at all concerned. "Not in the house."

Uncle Vernon grunted. A common form of expression for him.

"'_Watching the news_,' she says," He continued scathingly. "As if that's what she's really up to. As if any normal child cares what's on the news — Dudley doesn't care about anything of that sort, I doubt he knows who the Prime Minister is! And what's the workings of _our _government got to interest her? It's not like any of _her _lot is going to be mentioned on _our _—"

"Vernon, hush!' Aunt Petunia admonished. "The windows are open!"

"Oh, right — sorry, dear . . ."

The Dursleys fell silent. A chirpy jingle for a children's breakfast cereal was ignored by Marie as she watched batty Mrs. Figg from Wisteria Walk amble by slowly. The old woman was frowning and muttering to herself. Marie was then doubly happy with her hideout; Mrs. Figg had taken to inviting her over for tea whenever they saw each other in the streets. The girl idly watched the cat-loving older lady as she rounded the corner and disappeared from view, her ears perking when Uncle Vernon began speaking again.

"Dudders out for tea?"

"At the Polkisses'," said Aunt Petunia fondly. "He's got so many little friends, he's so popular . . ."

Marie repressed a scoff but didn't manage to fully silence the sound. The Dursleys really were astonishingly blind about Dudley; they had swallowed all his lies about having tea with a different member of his gang every night of the summer holidays. Marie knew perfectly well that Dudley had not been to tea anywhere; he and his gang spent every evening vandalizing the play park, smoking on street corners, and throwing stones at passing cars and children. Marie had seen them at it during her evening walks around Little Whinging; she had spent most of the holidays wandering the streets, scavenging newspapers even while trying to forget about the horrible end of the previous school year.

The opening notes of the music that heralded the five o'clock news reached Marie's ears and her heart jumped. Perhaps today — after a month of waiting — would be the day —

"Record numbers of stranded holidaymakers fill airports as the Spanish baggage-handlers' strike reaches its second week — "

"Give 'em a lifelong siesta, I would," snarled Uncle Vernon over the end of the newsreader's sentence, but no matter: Outside in the flower bed, Marie's stomach seemed to unclench and drop at the same time. If anything had happened, it would surely have been the first item on the news; death and destruction were more important than stranded holidaymakers. . . .

She let out a long, slow breath and stared up at the brilliant blue sky. Every day this summer had been the same: the tension, the expectation, the temporary relief, and then mounting tension again . . . and always, growing more insistent all the time, the question of _why_ nothing had happened yet.

She couldn't keep doing this to herself. Since the beginning of break, Marie had been following the news like a woman obsessed, paying attention to even the minutest details in case there was something shady that could have passed as something commonplace by the Muggles — missing people, strange accidents, anything. She had driven the Dursleys to distraction with her hovering, Uncle Vernon now so paranoid that he thought she was plotting against them.

Not that they didn't fully deserve someone plotting against them. Marie was considering doing so just for the sake of propriety.

Marie couldn't remember a summer back at Privet Drive more loathsome — at least, at first — not even the summer before second year, when they didn't even let her out for chores. An anxious dread filled her when she wasn't distracting herself, a cold sort of unpleasantness, like some cannibal had managed to rub fresh peppermint all over her lungs and stomach without having the courtesy to make sure she was dead first. Why wasn't anyone sending her any news? Why wouldn't they tell her anything? Were people getting hurt? That the Dursleys were more or less avoiding her — as they had been when they found out that Sirius was her godfather — actually did _not _help; instead of mind-numbing chores to soothe her, she had to find other means of distraction.

Marie plus desperate need for distraction equalled practices she was sure Hermione would scold her for. Not a full week into summer, she had been ready to do anything.

Wandering the streets just not doing it for her? That crowd of questionable-looking youths that hung out in the backyard of one of the low-end houses next to the parking-lot of park looked promising; people with hair that colourful and attitudes that blasé were sure to be full of lovely distractions. Sick of backing down, holding her tongue because she was told to be good? Those same delinquents posted music videos of covers on the internet — under their band name of Knuckle Bones — and had been looking for a girl to sing the female vocals and occasionally front. Marie screamed, growled, belted, beat-boxed, stomped, and danced for the camera until she lost herself in the moment and she could pretend that she was just a normal muggle girl with normal muggle girl concerns.

It was reckless, but she let herself fall into the scene of degenerate youth. She didn't care much for alcohol — disgusting aftertaste — but the little tattoo one of the older girls had given her had been liberating in its distracting pain and Marie rather liked the cigarettes, especially when she was taught how to blow smoke rings. She also rather liked the bitter taste of smoke when the bloke that gave her her first cigarette also taught her how to kiss.

Anything to not think of how angry and miserable she was. Which was compounded by the knowledge that she was being pathetic. Marie _knew _she was being ridiculous. What was she doing? Rebelling against people that weren't even around to know they were being defied? How was that helping anything? Running around didn't stop the nightmares, did it? Pathetic uselessness.

Marie could write an essay on why she should stop — mostly centered on what her friends would say — but she still refused to. She _wouldn't _stop — because when she was goofing around, playing at being teenaged riff-raff, she was just another face in the crowd. When the mothers with their children frowned in disapproval at them, Marie was not singled out. The others of the crowd didn't question her worthiness; they didn't care about who she was when she wasn't with them. She was not expected to be anything else than what she showed herself to be.

The serenity of being 'just Marie' and having people appreciate her when she was nothing more than that settled her into a sort of lull where the pressures and worries of the wizarding world eased themselves to the back of her mind. At least, when she was away from Privet Drive.

Truthfully, she had been feeling wretched since Cedric had nearly died when he had damned near cracked his head open on a tombstone jumping back from the Killing Curse. She had been too caught up in the battle and escape to give him much thought at first, but there weren't words to describe how relieved she had been when they had been dragged to the Hospital Wing and it turned out the Hufflepuff _hadn't _been hit by the curse. They were more friendly acquaintances that friends, but Marie knew she wouldn't have been able to live with herself if he had actually died.

And then that nonsense with the Minister! It was one thing to have some doubts about the story of a hysterical girl that had just been traumatized, it was a completely different matter to reject the whole fiasco altogether just because he was too scared to believe parts of it. If Marie had let herself be frightened into uselessness by the size of the basilisk back in second year, both Ginny and she would have been dead! Of course, this was also the man that had Hagrid sent to jail simply to be seen doing something despite the fact that the half-giant was innocent.

Honestly, there were days when she wondered why she even tried. A mass-murdering, serial killing terrorist had come back from the dead with plans that included taking over the country and killing her; to deal with that was a lot to ask of even from her. Maybe she should follow the example shown to her and look out only for her own affairs. She could pocket all of her funds from Gringotts and leave the country. She could change her name and move to the States, living out the rest of her life as Violet Tsirblou, the formerly French housewife of some aging sugar-daddy with a heavily-warded house. Someone else could worry about Voldemort.

If only she didn't have so many attachments to the people here. If only she could just stop caring.

Marie sighed quietly at her fantastical line of thought and closed her eyes against the blazing late afternoon sky as the newsreader said, "And finally, Bungy the budgie has found a novel way of keeping cool this summer. Bungy, who lives at the Five Feathers in Barnsley, has learned to water-ski! Mary Dorkins went to find out more. . . ."

Marie opened her eyes again. If they had reached water-skiing budgerigars, there was nothing else worth hearing. She was due to meet up with one of her new friends at the park anyway. She rolled cautiously onto her front and raised herself onto her hands and knees, padding like a cat through the small space that separated bush from wall. She turned the corner of the house and peeked through the foliage, checking to see if the woman next door was looking out the window.

Fortunately for Marie, there was no one in sight as she uncurled herself from her hiding place. She stretched luxuriously — her joints giving juicy pops — and shook the leaves from her hair, taking care to comb out the tangles with her fingers. Alice, one of the girls of the backyard crowd, had explained to Marie how she actually made it harder for herself by not separating curls every once in a while. If she kept ignoring it, it could start forming dreadlocks, and that style of hair was firmly on the side of indecent in the Dursley household. Resembling a dandelion was better than looking like 'one of those useless vagrants that care more about the blasted trees than they do bathing.'

Making her way up the street, Marie hummed the tune of one of the songs they had been blasting yesterday to stave off the melancholy that filled her when she accidentally let herself wallow. Wallowing was depressing and useless, she actively avoided doing so. But sometimes, she couldn't help but . . .

Tears of hopelessness prickled her eyes before she hastily wiped them away.

"Damn it all!" Marie cursed under her breath, picking up her pace. This had to be a surge of hormones or something. Another irritating part of puberty. Hormones made girls all weepy and stupid, right?

Marie refused to believe that she was naturally this pitiful, it had to be one of those stupid mood-swings she heard about. She had been initially excited that she seemed to be growing over night, but she would have happily lived her life as a twiggy midget if she could have avoided all the squishy sensitivity that apparently came with having breasts. She couldn't afford to be silly and girly now that Voldemort was back.

It all kept coming back to Voldemort.

Shaking herself of despair as she let her legs lead her to the park, Marie twisted her thoughts to the first available option that could overcome misery. Anger took main stage.

Lack of information — information _purposely _being kept from her, in particular — had always ruffled Marie. How was she supposed to make a potion with shoddy instructions? How was she to protect herself from Voldemort if she didn't know why he targeted her? Why did they think it was such a good idea to keep her out of the loop? Especially now?

Marie thought unhappily to the letters she had been exchanging with her friends. Any expectation she had had that their letters would bring her news had long since been dashed. _"We can't say much about you-know-what, obviously. . . ." "We've been told not to say anything important in case our letters go astray. . . ." "We're quite busy but I can't give you details here. . . ." "There's a fair amount going on, we'll tell you everything when we see you. . . ." _

But when were they going to see her? Nobody seemed too bothered with a precise date. Hermione had scribbled, _"I expect we'll be seeing you quite soon"_ inside her birthday card, but how soon was soon? As far as Marie could tell from the vague hints in their letters, Hermione and Ron were in the same place, presumably at Ron's parents' house.

She could hardly bear to think of the pair of them having fun at the Burrow when she was stuck in Little Whinging. Stuck without anyone to talk to about her fears or ease her guilt. They knew how much she hated it; why did they dangle it in front of her? And didn't they say that they would keep her filled in? She was so angry at them that she had thrown both their birthday presents of Honeydukes chocolates away unopened, though she had regretted it after eating the wilting salad Aunt Petunia had provided for dinner that night.

What were Ron and Hermione busy with? Why wasn't Marie allowed to be involved? Hadn't she proved herself capable? Had they all forgotten what she had done? Hadn't it been she who had entered that graveyard and watched Cedric's body fall lifelessly, and been tied to that tombstone and nearly killed — ?

_Don't think about that_, Marie told herself sternly for the hundredth time that summer. It was bad enough that she kept revisiting the graveyard in her nightmares without dwelling on it in her waking moments too.

She turned a corner into Magnolia Crescent; halfway along she passed the narrow alleyway down the side of a garage where she had first laid eyes on her godfather. Sirius, at least, seemed to understand how Marie was feeling; admittedly his letters were just as empty of proper news as Ron and Hermione's, but at least they contained words of caution and consolation instead of tantalizing hints:

"_I know this must be frustrating for you. . . ." "Keep your nose clean and everything will be okay. . . ." "Be careful and don't do anything rash. . . ." _

Well, thought Marie, as she crossed Magnolia Crescent, turned into Magnolia Road, and headed toward the park, she had done as Sirius advised; she doubted that hanging around people that could be labeled as hooligans was 'keeping her nose clean,' but she had at least resisted the temptation to tie her trunk to her broomstick and set off for the Burrow by herself. In fact, Marie thought her behaviour had been very good considering how frustrated and angry she felt at being stuck in Privet Drive this long, reduced to hiding in flower beds in the hope of hearing something that might point to what Lord Voldemort was doing. Nevertheless, it was irritating as hell to be told not to be rash by a man who had served twelve years in prison, escaped, attempted to commit the murder he had been convicted for in the first place, and then gone on the run with a stolen hippogriff.

Her friends refused to give her answers, her godfather told her to keep her head down and be a good girl, and Dumbledore seemed to have forgotten all about her. Sit tight and wait was what she had been told to do, but how long would she have to wait? They had said a few weeks but it had been over a month already. No one else seemed to be bothered by her current exile in the muggle world.

Marie vaulted over the locked park gate and set off across the parched grass. The park was as empty as the surrounding streets. When she reached the swings, she sank onto the only one that Dudley and his friends had not yet managed to break, coiled one arm around the chain, and stared moodily at the ground. Her thoughts of resentment and worry whirled around in her head, and her insides writhed with anger as the sun began to sink, the air full of the smell of warm, dry grass and the only sound was that of the low grumble of traffic on the road beyond the park railings.

"I've seen sweeter expressions on a rabid dog," said a voice from Marie's right not five minutes into her brooding silence. Tramping through a well dug sandbox was a freckled strawberry-blonde dressed in paint-splatter jeans and a tank top of similar build as Marie. Her pin-straight hair was pulled up in a high ponytail, revealing every lovely inch her face that was currently settled in a wry smirk.

"Fudge you," Marie retorted, pumping her legs so that the swing began to move.

"Did you just say fudge?" the other girl snorted. She grabbed the chains to stop the swings and bumped a hip against Marie's, forcing her to scoot over.

As they wiggled and swung their legs about, trying to both fit on the seat, Marie replied, "I'm trying to break my recent swearing habit before I lose all control of it. If I start throwing out 'fuck' and 'shite' in between every other word, I'll never get Hermione off my back."

They eventually settled with both of them straddling the wooden seat back-to-back, clinging onto their respective chains like exotic dancers. It wasn't as uncomfortable as it could have been if either of them had been bigger, and Marie was glad for that when she had to curl tighter around her chain as the other girl forced the swing to start swinging suddenly by shifting her hips.

"Sally-Anne Perks!" Marie yelped, relying on her uncanny balance to keep her from somersaulting from her seat. She pressed her back more firmly into the other girl and added her own strength into the swinging, causing them to fling about higher off the ground.

"God, Potter, you sound like my mother when you pull that full name rubbish."

"I wouldn't have to impersonate authority figures, _Perks_, if you didn't try to fling me off park equipment to an ignoble death."

"I doubt it would _kill_ you_._"

"Save it for the bobbies, hooker-hips. When they come to collect my crumpled corpse, you can explain how your stripper-pole trained thighs swung about a chain aggressively enough to send a girl into orbit before she face-planted into a sandbox."

"At least it would be a memorable way to go," Sally-Anne said solemnly, not missing a beat. They both looked over their shoulders and watched each other with completely straight faces. Marie broke first, an indelicate guffaw burst up from her belly, and they dissolved into helpless giggles, still flying through the air.

Marie had discovered that Sally-Anne Perks, a Hufflepuff girl in her year, actually lived only a handful of blocks away from Privet Drive, within shouting distance of Marie's former primary school. At least, she had lived there since the summer after third year, after her mother had panicked from hearing about the soul-sucking monsters that had wandered the grounds. She finally had enough of her daughter at 'a dangerous farce of a school for unbalanced crazies', and decided that moving to a new area that oozed mundanity would be the perfect way to begin their fresh start. Through excessive arguing, Sally-Anne had been allowed to learn magic through an owl-correspondence program for the home-schooled, but she had still been enrolled in the local high school. It wasn't a surprise to discover that the young witch was furious about being pulled away from the world she had planned to spend the rest of her life in.

Fortunately for Sally-Anne — and unfortunately for Mrs. Perks — they moved near where 'that odd Potter girl' lived.

They had stumbled across each other during one of Marie's walks to escape the Dursleys during the summer before fourth year. Sally-Anne had been hanging out with her neighbour, Alice — one of the girls from the backyard crowd that later introduced both witches to the rest of the gang — when Marie had come tearing through the park to get away after insulting Dudley, vaulting over park equipment like she was training for the Olympics and flinging herself onto the branch of the most convenient tree. Coincidentally, the tree she chose was the only tree in Alice's backyard. She scrabbled her way up like she had been born in it and perched herself on the highest branch she could reach like she was preparing to start a nest up there.

The gap-mouthed stare of Sally-Anne and Alice was soon mirrored by Marie after she realized she had an audience. The absurdity of the situation increased when the two witches had blurted each others' names out in disbelief at actually meeting another magical person in the depressingly normal town that was Little Whinging.

They had hung out together a few times — testing the waters a bit since they hadn't spoken much before and both were reserved around strangers by nature — before Marie went off to the World Cup with the Weasleys. They had caught up again when Marie came back for the summer and had wasted no time in venting to each other about the injustice in their lives.

Suffice to say, they had been almost attached at the hip since then, both excited to have someone that understood what it was like to be a wizard in the muggle world that they also got along famously with. Marie had been completely horrified for Sally-Anne's plight and Sally-Anne had been righteously appalled for Marie after hearing about the year that she had missed. The empathy that they shared brought forward an astonishing amount of confessions and worries from both of them to the point where they weren't sure if they ever had anyone who knew them as well as the other. Marie could now comfortably count Sally-Anne as one of her closest friends.

"So what's with the bitch-face you were wearing?" Sally-Anne asked.

Marie sighed. And she had just started to feel better. "There's still nothing on the news about Vol — I mean, _You Know Who. _Nothing in the papers _or_ telly. And Ron and Hermione are still telling me jack-shit. Not to mention that I've stayed here longer than they promised me I would have to."

"More of the same then." Sally-Anne tossed her hair and slowed their swinging. "I, of course, am perfectly happy with you around so I'm not _completely _alone with the suburban zombies, but it _is _rather shoddy of them to not keep their word."

"I know, right? I'm pretty ticked about being here to begin with, but I'm properly pissed that they don't seem to even care. Did I tell you that I'm pretty sure they're all together too? Fucking arses."

"They could at least have the decency to mention every once in a while that they miss you."

"I think it was supposed to be implied. You know Ron's no good with even realizing what he's feeling and Hermione doesn't do sentiment unless there's a logical reason for it. In a way, I'm just happy they're writing to me at all."

"You're too generous. Maybe I'm a black-hearted bitch, but I don't see how you benefit from any it. I remember that time Brown was crying after Divination about her rabbit and Granger not understanding _why _she had been scared about it dying. If she's proving a point, no one else's thoughts or feelings matter."

"I think you might be exaggerating just a smudge."

"Oh, _please_. They're hardly writing about anything important to you, right? And _none _of them — I'm including the teachers and the other adults too — even care that you could be mentally scarred or traumatized? What is this, the Middle Ages? They must think you as some divine being that can just brush off that nightmare you and Diggory went through."

"I supposed that since I'm the legendary Girl Who Lived, I shouldn't be bothered by things like a little death and dismemberment. I shouldn't be bothered by a near death experience."

"_A _near death experience? Are you saying the dragon and the acromantulas don't count? I think all four of you that had to survive that sodding tournament deserve counselling."

"You say 'deserve' as if counselling was some reward," Marie quipped, forcing the swing to fly higher again.

Sally-Anne huffed. "It might as well be with the way no one seems to believe it's a necessity. Oh!" She twisted suddenly, making the swing to jerk awkwardly, an excited expression on her face. "Speaking of necessities, I just read this article in Witches' Weekly . . . "

They then dissolved into a discussion on the morality of muggle make-up versus glamour charms, Sally-Anne pointing out pros and cons of both while Marie wondered why she should bother to buy products if she could achieve the same effects through magic.

Marie didn't know how long they had chattered on, swinging like little girls, before the sound of voices in the distance, growing louder, interrupted their conversation. It had to have been quite a while since the sun was sinking, the streetlamps from the surrounding roads were casting shadows long enough to reach a group of people making their way across the park. One of them was singing a loud, crude song while the others laughed. A soft ticking noise came from several expensive racing bikes that they were wheeling along.

Marie knew exactly who those people were. The figure in front was unmistakably her cousin, Dudley Dursley, wending his way home, accompanied by his faithful gang.

Dudley was as vast as ever, but a year's hard dieting and the discovery of a new talent had wrought quite a change in his physique, making him look more like a meat-head than a bowling ball. As Uncle Vernon delightedly told anyone who would listen, Dudley had recently become the Junior Heavyweight Inter-School Boxing Champion of the Southeast. 'The noble sport,' as Uncle Vernon called it, had made Dudley even more formidable than he had seemed to Marie in the primary school days when she had served as Dudley's first punching bag — that is, until he was caught by a teacher and severely punished for hitting a girl. Marie was not remotely afraid of her cousin anymore but she still didn't think that Dudley learning to punch harder and more accurately was cause for celebration. The neighbourhood children were terrified of him — even more terrified than they were of 'that Potter girl,' who, they had been warned, was a hardened hooligan who attended St. Brutus' Secure Center for the Incurably Criminal.

Sally-Anne followed Marie's gaze to the pack of goons pedalling nearer. The corners of her mouth turned downward and her eyes narrowed. She had held a grudge against Dudley's gang since one of them — Dennis maybe — tore up her homework after she refused to give him a kiss. "I wonder who they've been beating up this time," she scorned.

"If only they didn't scare their victim into silence, they could be locked in a detention center right now."

"If only dreams came true." The blonde girl pulled herself up from the swing and stretched obviously.

"What are you doing?" Marie hissed, noticing how Dudley's gang had slowed a bit at seeing Sally-Anne stand before speeding up again. The blonde lifted her chin daringly as Marie said, "They're going to come over here now!" This was directly in contradiction to Sirius' warning of avoiding conflict. Marie wasn't sure if she was put out or excited that she couldn't be blamed for instigating _this _fight waiting to happen.

"I've been waiting for a chance to really give it to them," Sally-Anne explained, her gaze still on the approaching boys. Abruptly, she turned back to Marie and gave the swing a push from where she stood, sending the swing going from side to side instead of front to back. "You said that tub of lard's avoiding you, right?" she continued. "That means you're the perfect back up since he _knows_ you can hand him his arse. They wouldn't dare try anything beyond words."

"Careful, Badger dear, your scales are showing," Marie muttered for only her friend to hear as Dudley's gang screeched to a halt not twenty feet away. The girls feigned disinterest, striking up a conversation about Matt — the drummer for Knuckle Bones — and his new dye job, not sparing the lumbering morons even a glance.

"Well, lookie here," Piers Polkiss said, the arrogant smarm all bullies had oozing though his tone. He gave both girls appreciative leers.

Dudley stood at the front of the herd with his arms crossed, trying looking superior, but Marie could tell that he had been nervous and confused since the moment he realized she was there; he didn't know she had any friends outside of school. They had barely seen each other all summer, what with him terrorizing the neighbourhood and her staying away from the house as long as she could in the next neighbourhood over. The other three goons — Dennis, Malcolm, and Gordon — looked excited for the confrontation, though they didn't look blood-thirsty, so this was most likely their attempt at flirting. Marie couldn't wait to see Sally-Anne slap them down.

"Ladies," Polkiss tried to purr, but failed. "What are you two doing out here all alone?"

Marie leaned into her chain indolently as Sally-Anne put her hands on her hips and stared them all down. "It's hardly any of your business, is it? Why don't you lot get lost?"

Gordon sneered when he remembered his last confrontation with Sally-Anne. "Watch your mouth, Perks. Wouldn't want us teach you some respect, would you?"

Dudley's eyes widened minutely in alarm when Marie scowled at his lackey. He was clearly already regretting coming over, but held his ground; he couldn't lose face in front of his friends.

Sally-Anne scoffed and flipped her hair. "Oh, _please. _I don't know who you think you are, but we could take you easy." Marie couldn't believe how brash the blonde was being. Why did she have to choose now to channel her inner Gryffindor? "And wouldn't that just put you in your place?"

"'Ere," Polkiss said, regaining attention. He looked mildly curiously between the girls and Gordon. "You know them, Gore?"

"I know Perks," Gordon affirmed. "She goes to school with Dennis, Malcolm, and me. Dunno the other one though."

Marie scowled more heavily at this, pulling away from her chain and swing her leg over to face forward. They had spent five years chasing her around and bullying her and they didn't even remember her? She clutched at the swing angrily when she saw the idiots watch the movements of her thighs and the sway of her breasts instead of looking at her face. Even Dudley, though he looked disgusted with himself when he caught himself looking. No wonder they didn't recognize her, they were too busy thinking with their knobs instead of their heads.

"I see you're even less intelligent than I thought," Marie said scornfully. She brushed her bangs out of her eyes and glared at them balefully, the same glare she had given then multiple times in the past, the one that made her eyes glow terribly and made them pause in alarm even when they had her pinned down. They froze in alarm this time as well. "You'd think you'd remember one of your favourite victims."

"Potter?" Malcolm grunted. This was actually impressive in itself, since Malcolm and Dennis were the equivalent of Crabbe and Goyle to Dudley's Draco Malfoy, and considering how Dudley was also equally more intelligent than them as Malfoy was too his own goons, it was amazing Malcolm and Dennis were even toilet trained, let alone capable of speech. The sandy-haired idiot looked surprised even as he gave her another once-over.

"Lovely to see you again, too, toe-rags," Marie sneered. Her expression softened in confusion when Sally-Anne leaned up against her without looking away from the boys. She then gave her friend an exasperated look when she realized they now looked like they were posing for a girlie magazine with they way their breasts were pressed together. Honestly, what was that girl thinking?

"Oh, dear," the blonde girl said mockingly. She took amusement in the way the guys gaped more obviously at their breasts. Marie always thought that Sally-Anne was a femme fatale in the making. "You should definitely go now, I prefer my men with more than two brain cells collectively."

"You're a girl?" Polkiss finally blurted. The question was echoed by the three other morons. The girls and Dudley looked at them disbelievingly, an odd trio joined together by the sheer stupidity of Dudley's lackeys. Polkiss flushed an unattractive red when he noticed even Dudley looking at him strangely. "Don't look at me like that! How were we supposed to know with her running around as scrawny as any boy?"

Sally-Anne and Marie shared a glance. "Well," Marie said, giving them a patronizingly pitying look. "I see there won't be any conversation of use today. Why don't you lot trot off then? Go rest your poor brains after all the hard work they had to endure just now."

"Don't you talk to my friends like that, Potter!" Dudley said, finally coming to their rescue.

"You tell the bitch, Big D!" Gordon cheered.

The girls shared another glance, this one highly amused.

"Big D?" Sally-Anne giggled. "Does the 'D' stand for what I think it does?"

"I think it stands for Dudley," Marie assured. "But it _could _mean what it sounds like. Even though I've seen him running about the house naked as a kid to know well enough that _that _particular D is not at all big."

They giggled harder when Dudley reddened in anger and embarrassment.

"Shut your gob," he growled, taking a threatening step forward.

"How long have you been Big D, Dudders? It's a cool name."

"Shut it."

"Of course, you'll always be Ickle Diddykins to me," Marie carried on, maliciously enjoying her cousin's anger.

"I said SHUT IT!" he roared. His gang looked like they were ready to back up their leader while also uncomfortable about harassing girls, they had enough chivalry in them for _that _at least. Sally-Anne started to look wary when Dudley shouted but didn't waver; this fight had been her idea after all.

"Don't your boys know what your mum calls you? Or have you all conveniently forgotten all about mums and what they would think if they knew what you lot got up to?"

"Shut your face." Dudley's ham-like hands curled up into meaty fists.

"I'll take that as a yes then. Wouldn't it just break Aunt Petunia's heart if she knew you refuse to acknowledge her existence when you're off being big and bad."

Dudley's face was near puce coloured by this point, looking awfully like his father, but he said nothing. The effort of keeping himself from hitting Marie seemed to be demanding all his self-control. She snorted and eyed his conflicted gang. They seemed content to let them argue it out, if only because they didn't know what else to do.

"So who've you been beating up tonight?" Marie asked, disapproval written all over. "Another ten-year-old? I know you did Mark Evans two nights ago — "

"He was asking for it," snarled Dudley. His friends made weak sounds of agreement out of habit.

"Oh, did he? Sounds like an odd thing to ask for."

"He cheeked me."

"Is that so? Did he say you look like a pig that's been taught to walk on its hind legs? 'Cause that's not cheek, Dud, it true . . . "

A muscle twitched in his jaw as Dudley lunged at her, looking ready to choke her. His gang exclaimed, "D!" as Sally-Anne raised her hands to cover her mouth and gasped, "Marie!" Their alarm was for naught for as soon as Dudley managed to get a grip on her neck, Marie dug her carefully sharpened fingernails into her cousin's fleshy wrists, making him gasp and loosen his grip as nail scraped across bone painfully.

Marie scowled at him. She hissed dangerously, "You take your hands off me, Dudley Dursley, or I'll rip the flesh right off your bones. What kind of man do you think you'll be when you have to resort to violence during an argument with a girl? We'll see how tough you are when you're bleeding your way to the hospital."

Dudley tore his hands out of Marie's grip and bared his teeth at her, trying to ignore the droplets of blood that oozed from the small fingernail gouges. They weren't too deep, but they certainly made a statement. Piers and Gordon looked at Marie warily while the other two looked confounded by Dudley bleeding.

Sally-Anne looked a bit shaken. She clearly was regretting starting this. She had underestimated the animosity between the cousins.

"You think you're so big carrying that thing, don't you?" Dudley said, after a few seconds.

Marie tilted her head and gave him a questioning look. "What thing?"

"That — that _thing. _You know you're hiding it on you!"

Marie grinned viciously. Was he actually doing this in public? He knew he'd get his friends' mind-wiped if they caught on. "You mean this?" she asked, patting the pocket where her wand was stashed. She made a show of about to pull it out, stopping when his expression grew alarmed. "Why mention it if you don't want me to bring it out?"

"You're not allowed," Dudley said at once, frightening his lackeys further. They had also grown alarmed when they saw Dudley's expression, wondering what kind of deadly weapon Marie had on her to make him look like that. "I know you're not. You'd be expelled from that freak school you go to."

"How do you know they haven't changed the rules, Big D?"

"They haven't," he retorted, though he did look uncertain. Marie just laughed.

"Think you're so big. You're not this brave at night are you?" sneered Dudley.

"What are you on about?" Marie scoffed. "What does it matter what time of day it is? And doesn't it count as night already? That's what we call it when it start to get dark like this."

Marie was completely right about it almost being night. The sun had already set and the street lights were lit. Sally-Anne looked like she wanted to home already but her loyalty to her friend made her stay. _God bless those steadfast Hufflepuffs_, Marie thought.

"I mean when you're in bed!" Dudley snarled.

Marie stared at her cousin in incomprehension. His large face wore a strangely triumphant look.

"I'll repeat, what are you on about?" she said, completely nonplussed. "I'm not brave in bed? What am I supposed to be afraid of, monsters under the cot?"

"Sounds like he's propositioning you," Sally-Anne murmured, attempting a nonchalant expression.

"I hear you at night," Dudley carried on, ignoring her friend's comment. "Talking in your sleep. _Moaning._"

Marie, getting an inkling of what Dudley was trying to get at, adopted a scornful expression. "I think we'd all like to know what you were doing listening to me sleep. Especially if I'm moaning as you claim."

Dudley flushed but didn't back down. Instead, he adopted a high-pitched whimpering tone, a horrible mimicry of her own. "'Don't kill Cedric! Don't kill Cedric!' Who's Cedric — your boyfriend?"

Sally-Anne gasped again and looked indignant. "You shut your mouth, Dursley! Don't talk of things you don't know anything about!"

"And you do?" Dudley sneered, turning on the blonde girl. No one besides Marie and Sally-Anne's mother knew she was a witch. "You don't know anything about this freak!" He turned back to Marie and whined again, "'Dad! Help me, Dad! He's going to kill me, Dad! Boo-hoo!'"

Marie stared into his eyes, her eyes glowing and her expression chilling. In her coldest voice, she said, "Don't you ever talk of that again. I don't expect you to understand true terror, you spoiled, pampered house-pet, but I had thought there was enough humanity in you to hold your tongue about someone having nightmares about the psychopath that damn near murdered them. I think after being kidnapped and tortured, I have every right to a few FUCKING NIGHTMARES!" By the end of her statement, she had leaped to her feet and her voice had escalated to a shout as she shook in fury.

Magic crackled under her skin. Sally-Anne reached out a hesitant hand to soothe her friend but the tingle of magic made her withdraw. The blonde girl whispered, "Marie," in concern, wondering if the dark-haired girl was going to accidentally blow up her cousin like she did her aunt.

Marie breathed deeply through her nose. She reigned herself back and gave Dudley a black look.

Dudley looked shocked and almost reluctantly apologetic, he obviously had no idea such a thing had happened. His gang, on the other hand, looked as if they were wondering what kind of demented school Marie went to that such a viciously violent girl like herself had actually been in mortal danger.

"You lot," Marie said, addressing the loitering gang of moron. They jumped when her luminous gaze landed on them. "We're done here; go home." Her tone brooked no argument and the four bullies turned tail to escape. Dudley looked like he was about to protest her commanding his troops but a look of pure murder shut him up.

"Annie," Marie continued, softening her expression for her friend. "I think it's time you head home too."

Sally-Anne merely nodded. She obviously wanted to say something in apology for dragging Marie into a such a dreadful fiasco of a conversation, but instead just smile a quivering smile and left for home. "See you later then."

Marie fixed a blank gaze on her squirming cousin but said nothing. Despite herself and all the resentment she had against him for being so horrible to her — in the past and just now — she found her heart softening just the tiniest bit at his terrified expression. He looked like he expected her to whip out her wand and gut him on the spot. With his wide blue eyes, he reminded her of a house elf — albeit an enormously fat one — and she couldn't help but think him rather cute with such an expression.

Damn fluffy, girly hormones. Wasn't she ready to eat him alive not five seconds ago?

She nodded her head in the general direction of the house and sighed, "Let's go, Dudders." She took off without another word. After a moment, she heard him following her.

* * *

**M**arie frantically pounded at the door of Number Four with all the strength she could spare while half carrying a violently shivering and swaying Dudley. "Stay awake, Dudley, _please,_" she murmured, re-wrapping the arm she had used to knock on the door around her cousin's front to keep him somewhat in place.

She heard agitated grumbles from the living room along with a surly "What the devil?" before the front door was pulled open and Uncle Vernon frowned out at them.

"What do you think — ?" he began but cut himself off with a gasp. He surged forward, grabbing hold of his son with a frightened, "DUDLEY!" He pulled his boy farther into the house while shouting, "WHAT THE DEVIL DID YOU DO TO HIM, GIRL?"

"Vernon, what in worl — DUDLEY!" Aunt Petunia had come running out at the sound of shouting and shrieked at the sight of her son. "Diddy, darling, what happened to you?"

Marie had hustled into the house behind the two men and shut the door before shouting started. She darted toward the kitchen, shouting over her shoulder, "Get him to sit down but make sure he stays awake!" She rummaged through the cupboards, but to her frustration, she didn't find what she was looking for. She jogged back to the sitting room where the Dursleys were bundling up their son and asked, "Don't you have any chocolate in this place?"

"My son is hurt and you're looking for sweets!?" Aunt Petunia yelped indignantly. "What's wrong with him?"

"I'll tell you as soon as we get some chocolate in him!" Marie replied, resenting the fact that they thought her so heartless as to eat when Dudley was obviously injured. "they'll help!"

"What utter — "

"SHUT YOUR TRAP AND TELL ME WHERE YOU'RE HIDING THE BLASTED CHOCOLATES!" Marie roared when Uncle Vernon tried to disagree with her.

Fear for his son made Vernon comply to his niece's command. He lumbered over to where he kept his cigars and cracked open a case that was stuffed with chocolate bars. Saying nothing about how pathetic it was that he had to hide sweets from his wife, Marie snatched up and swiftly unwrapped a Mars Bar. She shoved it at Dudley's mouth and said, "Eat."

At first, Dudley did not respond, but then Marie pried open his slack mouth, shoved half the bar in, and lifted his jaw up, forcing him to chew. He then started chewing automatically. He gave a sigh of relief after he swallowed his first bite, his shivering noticeably lessening, and the sentiment was echoed by the other three people in the room.

Marie slid down from where she had been leaning over Dudley to make him eat the chocolate, and sat on her knees in front of the couch, leaning against the coffee table and running a hand through her hair. If he hadn't eaten . . . That would have meant . . . she had been _so _scared she had been too late.

The walk from the park had been tensely silent, the usual enmity between them strained even more so from their earlier argument and the actual physical harm they had caused each other. Dusk had fallen, the streetlamps looked like miniature suns illuminating the empty streets. All the houses had cars parked in the drive and all had their windows firmly shut and curtained. The distinctly bland feel of the area was re-enforced by the way the darkness faded out the personal touches of each house, making the neighbourhood look like it enforced a uniform code.

The had been ambling through a dimly lit tunnel went it happened.

Something had happened to the night. The star-strewn indigo sky was suddenly pitch-black and lightless — the stars, the moon, the misty streetlamps at either end of the opening of the tunnel had vanished. The distant grumble of cars and the whisper of trees had gone. The balmy evening was suddenly piercingly, bitingly cold. They were surrounded by total, impenetrable, silent darkness, as though some giant hand had dropped a thick, icy mantle over them blinding them. For a split second, Marie thought she had done magic without meaning to, though it was an odd moment to have done accidental magic since she had already calmed herself down from her fury with Dudley — then her common sense caught up with her — she didn't have the power to turn off the stars; she wasn't doing it. She turned her head this way and that, trying to see something, but the darkness pressed on her eyes like a weightless veil.

Dudley's terrified voice reached Marie's ear. "W-what are you d-doing? St-stop it!"

"I'm not doing anything!" She hissed, turning her head in the direction of his voice. "Shut up and don't move!"

"I c-can't see! I've g-gone blind! I — "

"I said shut up! There's something out there and they'll hear you if you keep on!"

Marie stood stock-still, turning her sightless eyes left and right. The cold was so intense that she was shivering all over; goose bumps had erupted up her arms, and the hairs on the back of her neck were standing up — she opened his eyes to their fullest extent, staring blankly around, unseeing . . .

It was impossible. . . . They couldn't be here. . . . Not in Little Whinging . . . She strained her ears. . . . She would hear them before she saw them. . . .

"I'll t-tell Dad!" Dudley whimpered. "W-where are you? What are you d-do — ?"

"Dudley, _be quiet!_" She grabbed blindly for him and managed to grip at his arm on her second try. She felt the chill of his flesh and pulled him closer. He clutched desperately at her as he shook, trying to get at her body heat. "I'm _not_ doing this. Shut up or they'll find us! Let me lis — "

Her voice cut off abruptly when she heard exactly she had been dreading. There was something in the tunnel with them, drawing wheezing, rattling hoarse breaths. She felt a horrible jolt of dread as she stood shivering in the unnaturally freezing air.

"Oh, god," She breathed, fear pooling in her stomach. She grappled at her pocket and pulled out her wand. Everything was still until —

_WHAM_

Dudley shoved Marie harshly away from him, lifting Marie off her feet before she landed heavily on her arms and knocked her head against the pavement. Small white lights popped in front of her eyes and she wondered if it was her lot in life to fall into the shoddiest situations as her wand — the only weapon against dementors — flew out of her hands.

"You moron!" Marie yelled, her eyes watering with pain, as she scrambled to her hands and knees, now feeling around frantically in the blackness. She heard Dudley blundering away, hitting the wall, stumbling. "Damn it all! YOU'RE RUNNING RIGHT AT IT!"

There was a horrible squealing yell, and Dudley's footsteps stopped. At the same moment, Marie felt a creeping chill behind her that could mean only one thing. There was more than one.

"DUDLEY, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT! WHATEVER YOU DO, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT! Wand!" Marie muttered frantically, her hands flying over the ground like spiders. "Where the hell — come on — _Lumos_!" Desperation made her say the spell, though she knew there was barely a chance in hell anything would come of it.

As if the universe was delighting in defying her expectations, a bright light a number of meters away from her lit up a length of the tunnel wall. If she hadn't been so frantic, she might have been delighted at her first success of intentional wandless magic; as it was, she was more concerned in reaching her wand before it was too late. She stumbled forward only to have her heart plummet as the light suddenly went out directly after the sound of a body hitting the ground and wood cracking.

Oh, god, was that — ? Did her wand just — ?

Marie didn't have time for further thought as the chill up her spine turned to pure ice. She spun to face the thing behind her. A towering, hooded figure was gliding smoothly toward her, hovering over the ground, no feet or face visible beneath its robes, sucking harshly on the night as it came.

Stumbling backwards, Marie did the only thing she could think of. She raised her hands and cried, "_Expecto Patronum!_"

It was a foolish hope but it was her only thing she could think of. The light making spell had worked, that clearly meant Marie was capable of doing wandless magic. And if she could do wandless magic, theoretically, that meant she was capable of a wandless Patronus as well.

Her theory was proven true as a silvery wisp of vapour shot from the palm of her wand hand and the dementor slowed. Her heart leaped at her mild success, but it wasn't enough! She tripped over her feet as the cloaked wraith loomed over her. A pair of gray, slimy, scabbed hands slid from inside the dementor's robes, reaching for her. A rushing noise filled Marie's ears.

"_Expecto Patronum!_" Her voice sounded dim and distant. . . . Another wisp of silver smoke, feebler than the last, burts from her hand. She couldn't do it, the spell wasn't working —

There was laughter inside her head, shrill, high-pitched laughter. . . . She could smell the dementor's putrid, death-cold breath, filling her lungs, drowning her — _Think . . . something happy. . . . _But there was no happiness in her. . . . The dementor's icy fingers were closing on her throat — the high-pitched laughter was growing louder and louder, and a voice spoke inside her head — _"Bow to death, Marie. . . It might even be painless. . . . I would not know. . . . I have never died. . . ."_

And wouldn't that be an effective way to get away from the nightmare that was Voldemort's return? She could die right here and she'd no longer have to worry about fighting, or people being suspicious of her, or the effort of keeping on anymore. And no one could think of her dying this way and saying she had chickened out by committing suicide since death by Kiss was not a way anyone would want to go, suicidal or not. And likely many people would be happy if she did die.

But was she really going to decide to die or keep living based on what people would think? Fuck them! Had she dwelled so long on other people's expectations, that she was now going to base the way she would leave this world on what the most amount of people would want? Fuck them all, not once had anyone been there beside her at those truly life and death situations, and she certainly didn't owe them anything now that _she _was the one that was going to die.

Damn it all, she did not make it so far, fought so desperately to _live, _and taken on atrocities that had older people running away in terror, to give up _now. _She had a life ahead of her, far more than she had ever thought possible when she was younger. There were people that wanted her; there were friends, there were possibilities. She had something to live for!

She focused her intent and desperation outward, pouring out the elation of her realization that had brought tears of joy to her eyes and —

"_EXPECTO PATRONUM!_"

An enormous silver stag erupted from Marie's outstretched hand; its antlers caught the dementor in the place where the heart should have been; it was thrown backward, weightless as darkness, and as the stag charged, the dementor swooped away, batlike and defeated.

"THIS WAY!" Marie shouted at the stag. Wheeling around, she sprinted down the now dimly lit tunnel. "DUDLEY? DUDLEY!"

She had run barely a dozen steps when she reached them: Dudley was curled on the ground, his arms clamped over his face; a second dementor was crouching low over him, gripping his wrists in its slimy hands, its hood lowered. It drew a suck breath right in front of Dudley's face and she saw her cousin's facial features were blurring —

"GET AWAY FROM HIM!" She roared. Not waiting for the Patronus, she flung herself at the wretched creature and tackled it away from her cousin, not letting the despair that came along with close contact with the beast deter her. In fact, the despair made her angry. As she felt a painful tugging at what felt like her _being_, rage overwhelmed her. Murderous, almost insane rage that made her want to sink her teeth in the creature and rip it apart with her bare hands.

Who the fuck did these disgusting things think they were, coming here and terrorizing helpless people? What if she hadn't been here? How many ignorant muggles would have died?

She actually landed a couple solid punches to where it's nose would have been, if it had a nose, and gotten what must have been dementor blood on her fists, before the silver stag she had conjured came galloping back past her. The dementor's eyeless face was bared, it gaping mouth a hideous hole not five inches away from Marie's face when the silver antlers caught it; the thing was thrown up into the air and, like its fellow, it soared away and was absorbed into the darkness. The stag cantered to the end of the tunnel, throwing it's head aggressively, and dissolved into silver mist.

Moon, stars, and streetlamps burst back into life. A warm breeze swept the alleyway. Trees rustled in neighbouring gardens and the mundane rumble of cars in Magnolia Crescent filled the air again. Marie climbed to her feet from where she had been crouched, all her senses vibrating, taking in the abrupt return to normality. Her adrenaline driven fury started to fade and she rushed at Dudley's prone form, hoping she hadn't been too late.

The next few minutes had been a confusing whirlwind. She had somehow pulled Dudley to his feet, when Mrs. Figg of all people had shown up — shrieking "Are you completely mad, girl! You TACKLED that monster!" — and Marie had learned of the secret guard that had been set up by Dumbledore to watch Number 4. After fully comprehending that she had been watched secretly by people that apparently were not at all effective — the dementor attack that she had to fight off by herself being very telling — Marie wasn't sure if she was relieved that she _hadn't _been completely looked over, or furious that she had been kept out of the loop about yet another thing.

And that repulsive man, that _Mundungus_, had the gall to try to excuse himself when he had abandoned his post for _cauldrons _of all things! She wanted to strangle him!

"What the bloody hell have you done, girl?" Uncle Vernon growled, when they were feeling more secure about Dudley's health. Aunt Petunia had her twiggy arms wrapped as far as she could manage around Dudley's shoulder and hand her face pressed into his hair.

Marie matched her uncle glare for glare. She just saved that bullying bastard of an overweight food-disposer from having his soul ripped form his body and _eaten _by a creature of nightmares after he made everything worse by _breaking her wand_, thus lowering their chances of surviving from iffy to less than a chance in hell; she was not about to take any blame for him being in less that perfect condition.

"_I _didn't do a thing!"

Marie barely got her protest out of her mouth before she was cut off. "Don't give me that codswallop!"

She refolded her legs until she was sitting cross-legged on the carpet. "Why the hell would I lie about that?"

"Don't you swear at me, you wretched girl!" Vernon shouted. "Dudley comes home half dead with you dragging him along, and I'm supposed to believe you don't have something to do with it?"

"I don't care if you believe it or not, I didn't hurt him!"

"And what did if it wasn't you?"

"Well, if you'd let me get more than a few words in edgewise, I'd tell you," Marie replied scornfully. "We were attacked by dementors — "

"What the ruddy hell are those?"

"SHUT UP and I'll tell you!" Marie waited in angry silence, making sure she wasn't about to be interrupted again, when she was cut off by Aunt Petunia instead.

"They're the guards at the wizard prison."

The remaining two people in the room that were not still mentally disturbed by the influence of dark creatures, gaped at the now horrified Petunia Dursley, who had slapped a hand to her mouth in shock of her own words. Fortunately — or unfortunately, based on one's way of thinking — a procession of owls attacked the closed windows of the sitting in an attempt to get at Marie, turning the attention away from Petunia's out if character words.

The conversation pretty much went down hill from there.

* * *

**A/N: **And there you have it, yet another story that isn't anywhere near complete. I hope you find it at least mildly interesting and forgive me for it not being my other stories that already have some fans. This one will probably get updated even more slowly than the others since I'm not completely sure where I'm going with this even though I do have a few future scenes already in mind.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: **Hey guys, here's chapter two. I got a way better response than I expected and I'm glad so many of you like Marie. To who ever it was that told me to keep her mean (I'm sorry, I'm really bad with names, usernames even worse), I plan to. Thanks also to those that liked Sally-Anne, I wasn't sure how ya'll would feel about her since she's not an often used character.

Sorry to person that asked for femslash between our two current leading ladies, I don't plan to write anything but het in detail because I know I don't understand homosexual love enough to do it proper justice. I'm all about realism when things are supposed to be realistic (like character behaviour and relationships) so I won't contrive something I don't understand.

Also, to the people that enjoy romance as a heavy theme, don't read my stuff. I might have some flirting and kissing when it feels right, but I don't make it a big thing. I will never have any "soul-bond" or "I'll die without you!" nonsense. Blame it on me being asexual.

I might have mentioned it before but don't exact regular updates. I have a buttload of stories on the back burner as well as three others up that also need updating.

* * *

**M**arie burst through the door of the room she had been told was the library. If she had stayed in that room, she would have screamed the house down and set delicate ears to stinging with the vulgarity of her language. Barely taking half a second to affirm the truth of what she had been told, she none too gently slammed the door close again. She then immediately set to locking the door and barring it from entrance by shoving the heaviest armchair she could manage in front of it — one that took all her strength to move even with a boost of rage and adrenaline adding onto her strength. She then threw herself into the armchair and pounded the cushioned arms with her her remaining fury.

Oh, she wanted to —! And then she'd —! But Marie reigned in the urge to go back to the bedroom they had been in and beat the living shit out of those two arse-kissing, blindly following, _promise-breaking _pillocks. She was going to stay in that god forsaken library until she no longer wanted to bitch-slap and groin-stomp the next person that came to her spewing excuses.

Marie tossed her head back against the chair and glared at the dusty bookshelves that greeted her.

They had some fucking nerve!

Of all the stupid things they could have said in an attempt to make her less angry with them for not telling her a fucking thing, they chose _'Dumbledore told us not to'_? Since when did they give two shits about what they were told? Why did they pretend that they were just innocent bystanders, forced to bend to the commands of others? Like they were actually the most rule-abiding people around!

Did they think that she was completely stupid?

It hadn't been _Marie's _idea to accept Malfoy's challenge to a duel at midnight back in first year, or start snooping in the restricted section when they couldn't find anything on Flamel. She wasn't the one that insisted they hijack a magical car and fly it to Scotland, or drug fellow students to use their hair in a restricted potion, or run off to the school library by herself when they were told to stick together. When it came down right to it, Marie never broke the rules unless she had to, it was _them _that tossed rules about whenever they wanted, so why would they even think that _'we were told not to' _would be an acceptable reason to tell her jack-shit?

Ron she could sort of get since it was _Dumbledore _that told them not to do something, and Ron respected the headmaster more than he did his own parents, but Marie didn't get where Hermione was coming from. The bookish girl might preach respect for authority figures, but her actions told another tale. Marie had been there when Hermione lied right to McGonagall's face about the troll, and when she had talked Hagrid into telling them things he wasn't supposed to. She had heard directly from Ron how the other girl _set fire _to Snape's robes, and she had been part of the crowd that watched as Hermione hurled insults at the Divination professor before walking out in the middle of lesson; none of that spoke of the piety toward those in charge that she was always on about. Not even the worst of the arrogant bigots in Slytherin that thought themselves above everyone else dared to do anything like what Hermione had.

They didn't care about breaking rules and they regularly defied authority figures; why hadn't they been willing to do it once more? Was keeping their word to her less important than being heroic Gryffindors out on an adventure, proving their bravery?

Marie snatched up a vase that was sitting on a low shelf next to the door and pitched it clean across the room, taking some satisfaction in the way it shattered against a stack of books sitting on a study table and knocked the stack to the floor with several loud thumps.

Though she wanted to scream that she was furious because of her friends being distressingly disappointing, the truth was that their inanity had only compounded onto the anger she had seething just below the surface since the flock of owl that had given her more commands but absolutely no answers. She had been mad when the first Ministry letter said they were going to destroy her wand ("Good luck with _that,_" she had sneered at the letter. Not much to destroy now that her wand was broken.) but the letters telling her stay put and behave infuriated her. Who they hell did they think they were to tell her what to do? She was an orphan that had no obligation to obey any of them, seeing how she wasn't in school and none of them were her legal guardians, especially when they expected her to just obey blindly.

She wished she had managed to give one of the 'guard' sent to pick her up a proper punch in the face when she still had the excuse of not knowing who they were or why they breaking into her relative's house.

Hadn't that been a trip? She had heard them making a ruckus downstairs while the Dursleys were out and Marie had met them at the stairs with a loaded shotgun pointed at them, dug up from her aunt and uncle's room where she knew Uncle Vernon kept a gun just in case. She threatened to blast their heads in until Professor Lupin stepped forward and tried to reassure her. In response, Marie turned the gun on him specifically and demanded that he prove that he actually was himself; she wasn't about to be taken in again by some polyjuice'd Death Eater.

She had allowed herself to be calmed down by her patient former professor after he had proven himself when Mad-Eye — the real one this time — growled, "You quite sure it's her, Lupin? I don't want to chance us bringing back some Death Eater impersonating her. We ought to ask something only Potter would know."

While she could agree that confirming it was really her was sensible, Marie was still peeved by the implication. "Why would you need to do that?" she asked, glaring a bit at the old Auror. "Are you telling me that you think the people you sent to watch me suck so badly at their job that I could have been kidnapped by Death Eaters right in front of them without them even noticing?"

_That _had put a bee in the paranoid old bastard's bonnet right proper.

She knew shouldn't have been uncooperative, but over four weeks with nothing, not the tiniest hint of a plan to remove her from Privet Drive — none mentioned to _her _— and suddenly a gaggle of wizards were standing matter-of-factly in the house as though them arriving had been a long-standing arrangement. As if she should have been sitting around, waiting patiently for them to arrive at their convenience. She was too offended to even care she was standing in front of them in an oversized t-shirt, over-sized pajama bottoms, and bed-head. If they wanted her to be ready and presentable when they deigned to retrieve her, they could have at least bloody well called.

It was only after Marie _did _prove herself, and she and Tonks had packed her things that they had taken to the skies like a flock of giant ducks flying south for the winter. That is, if the ducks were actually flying east and flew in battle formation. Marie was glad she had stayed dressed in her comfy and warm pjs.

Privately, even more privately than the mutinous thoughts she was already thinking to herself, Marie knew she was being unfair to the guard. It wasn't like it was _their _idea to completely disregard her right as a sentient life form to actually have a choice in plans concerning her. Not that that stopped her from being angry.

"_'He thought it was best . . .', 'Made us swear not to tell you anything . . .'_," Marie muttered to herself bitterly. What utter bullshit. If it had been one of _them _stranded and going out of their mind with worry, she wouldn't have given a damn what _anyone_ said.

If owls were so fucking dangerous, why had no one tried sending her something through muggle post? Did they expect Voldemort to have his followers staking out the sodding post office, hiding in the back of a UPS truck, or impersonating mailmen? Did it take too much effort to have one of those bloody stalkers assigned to watch the house slip her a letter while they were under their invisibility cloaks? Why was all the thought given to keeping Marie informed reduced to _'Well, we can't do it the normal way. Guess the girl will have to be out of the loop'_?

Fuck them all.

_'We don't know anything either!'_ Ron had said. _'Mum won't let us near the meetings!'_

As if that would make up for the fact that she had been left out! As it that made up for the fact that they seemed to forget all about her until it was convenient. Since the beginning of summer, nothing but drivel sent to pacify her. None of them seemed to remember that she had been sent back to her personal hell-hole right after a traumatic event that would have sent others gibbering to the mental hospital. There had been no _'Hello Marie, how are you holding up? I was concerned about how you were feeling after being forcibly used in a necromantic ritual.'_

Her head gave a horrid throb and she clenched her eyes against the tears of frustration that leaked out. If she had a crowbar in her hands, she'd . . . She had been so happy to see them again earlier and now she was wishing they would just got to hell.

She jumped out of the abused armchair and walked purposefully toward a bookshelf. God dammit all, she needed something to distract her before she started bleeding out of her eyes from the pressure in her brain. A book would have to do. She would have tried to contact Sally-Anne, but her stuff was still downstairs and she really didn't want to go out and possibly run into Ron and Hermione again right away.

Marie's hand landed on a book that was shoved a bit out of sight between bigger books. She used her fingernails to claw it out from it's hiding place with curiosity. Someone had gone through some effort to hide this book. It was done in red leather with silver writing on the cover.

"Art of the Succubus," she read out loud, tracing her fingers over the spin, her new interest in the book in front of her shoving her frustration to the back of her mind. Sounded like the title of medieval erotica. She opened to a random page and flipped through a bit without reading it yet. She landed on a page with a moving picture of two guys — Renaissance era based on their hair — naked on a couch and rutting. Her eyes widened and she couldn't help but blush a bit. It certainly _looked _like medieval erotica as well.

What the hell was it even doing here? Marie couldn't help but notice that the binding was worn from heavy use. She looked up and considered the room more directly. It looked neglected and there was dust everywhere, even on the book she had just picked up, so obviously no one came in here often. That meant no one would miss anything should something disappear.

She flipped back to the front and started reading. She would read it until her anger died away. And maybe if it was smutty enough, she could send it to Sally-Anne. Sort of a _'sorry for skipping town without warning you; here's some tasty gay porn in apology' _gift.

* * *

**T**here were times when Marie wondered if she should have followed her Uncle Vernon's advice back on the day she had turned eleven and just gone to Stonewall High like they had originally planned. She would have never gotten mixed up in life-threatening situations or dark wizards trying to kill her; she would be on her way to a regular life in the muggle world, eventually graduating and getting a job that hopefully paid well. Her biggest concern would be grades and getting credits that would look good on a job resumé. Maybe a boyfriend or two thrown in. Everything would have been completely ordinary and she would have been just another face in the crowd.

Those instances of self-doubt would then lead her to berating herself for not appreciating what she had. Magic was real! She had friends! There were people that cared about her! Everyday always had something satisfyingly magical going on that she was never bored! What more could a girl want?

But it wasn't like she couldn't have made muggle friends, an annoyingly matter-of-fact part of her countered. She had already known that getting away from the Dursleys would lead her to find people that liked and cared about her; they didn't have to have magic to exist. And she was only going on about how she would miss them and magic so much because she had immersed herself so much in it. The truth of the matter was that if she never discovered magic, she would have continued living just as well as she had before, not missing it at all.

So really, was it specifically Ron and Hermione, the Weasleys, and Sirius that she would miss? Coming down right to it, continued the annoying part of her, what she wanted was friends and people that truly cared. Who those people were as individuals didn't matter. If she had met a boy from Ravenclaw on the train before she met Ron, and that boy proved to be kind and friendly, he likely would have ended up as one of her best friends instead of Ron.

Continuing on this line of thought, it was very likely that Marie could have lived out her life as a muggle and been just as happy — maybe even more; not as much happiness to be had when people as trying to kill you — completely ignorant of the wizarding world. She could probably even leave the country and start a new life — like she had fantasized about before — and be just as happy as she had always been.

Marie wasn't sure how she felt about realizing such a thing about herself. Did that make her shallow? She liked hanging out with her friends and sharing things with them, but the _person_ that was her friend didn't matter so long as they got along fairly well. Well, if she ever had a huge falling out like the one she had with Ron because of the Tournament, she could console herself with the fact that she could move on to different people with little difficulty. She just had to make sure she kept the fact to herself or else that falling out would come sooner instead of later.

Maybe she could drop that bomb after finishing Hogwarts if she ever want to go through with the plan to leave the country and assume a new identity.

This was the train of thought that churned about Marie's mind as Mrs. Weasley and Sirius shouted at each other about she should be told. Or shouldn't be told, in the case of Mrs. Weasley who seemed to forget that she was currently questioning the mental stability of the owner of the house she was currently running as it were her own, who also happened to be Marie's godfather — the only person she was obligated to listen to — and also that Marie was sitting right there, growing more irritated every passing second they sat there arguing about her like she wasn't there.

They had been going at it since Marie had come down for dinner — ignoring the space near her friends — and Sirius had asked about her lack of questions concerning what was going on. Marie would have readily laid that assumption to rest if it hadn't been for the Weasley matriarch cutting in, claiming Marie to young to know anything.

"She's only fifteen!" the red-haired matron had exclaimed, as if someone's age mattered when there was an insane terrorist on the loose, aiming to kill them.

Marie said out loud exactly what she had thought. Suffice to say, it didn't go over well.

They went back and forth about _'needing to know' _and _'right to know' _and all sorts of other tosh that basically boiled down to a few facts; Mrs. Weasley was overprotective though she meant well, and apparently thought that the knowledge that Voldemort was doing _anything_ was too much for Marie's poor mental health to cope with, while Sirius was not at full adult maturity because of his time in jail, and he thought Marie had every right to know what was going on, though he might have being too carefree since Marie really wasn't an adult yet.

"Dumbledore has his reasons for not wanting Marie to know too much, and speaking as someone who has got Marie's best interests at heart —"

"Mrs. Weasley, please," Marie said, cutting in, tired of the back and forth nonsense. She leaned into Sirius' arm and curled around it comfortingly, feeling him trembling from anger, and patted his hand soothingly. "If someone has concrete reasons to not tell me something I have a right to know, I would need to know those reasons at the very least. Until someone gives me an actually good reason not to know what's going on — like possibly putting someone's life in danger — I want to know everything I can. I don't see how being kept ignorant would help me in this case."

"Dumbledore said you —"

"Dumbledore isn't exactly in my good books at the moment," Marie said, her eyes narrowing. From the tenseness in Sirius' jaw when the headmaster had previously been mentioned, she could tell he wasn't at all happy with the older man either. "Quite frankly, while I appreciate him going through so much trouble to keep an eye on me — though I wish someone had told me about _that _too — he is _not _my father and has no right to make decisions for me!"

That statement had gone over as well as her comment about being plenty old enough for people to try to kill her.

In the end, after being called _'obviously too immature to understand the situation' _and _'too childish,' _Marie had been allowed to ask her questions and get at least _some _answers. Mrs. Weasley had kicked up another fuss about her children knowing anything — even Fred and George though they were already of age — and had almost forcefully removed them from the room when Mr. Weasley came to the twins' rescue saying they really couldn't make the two leave since they were already of age.

_That _had resulted in Mrs. Weasley forcing Ron and Ginny out of the room at wand-point when they begged to stay as well. Ron tried to argue that it wasn't fair that Marie got to stay when he had to leave, and that Marie would tell him all about it later even if he did leave, but Marie had been made to agree not to tell the youngest Weasleys anything at all. While a part of her was vindicated by them being kept in the dark as she had been, there was also the matter of Mrs. Weasley being their mother and having full right to tell her kids what to do; she was arguing for her rights, she was not about to be a hypocrite and encroach on another person's.

So, when the two youngest Weasleys were escorted back to their rooms, Marie, the twins, and Hermione got their questions answered. Through quick thinking on her own part, Hermione managed to argue that her parents let her come over with their full permission and expected her to to take care of herself, therefore, since she was allowed to do as she pleased, she also was within her rights to stay. Mrs. Weasley turned tomato red at that.

Now Marie was sitting in the bedroom cleaned out for her, staring blankly at sleeping portrait in front of her bed, trying to make sense of what she had heard. Hermione and Ginny were sleeping in the room next to hers and Ron and the twins were across the hall. No doubt Ginny had stayed away to grill Hermione about what was said and — her sharp ears picked up the sound of a faint pop — the twins had apparated into Ron's room to inform him as well. Marie was absently amused by the fact that Mrs. Weasley had forgotten to make the other three swear not to tell the youngest of her brood anything.

Voldemort was laying low to recruit followers while Fudge was doing his damnedest to discredit Dumbledore for saying the Dark Lord was back. The Ministry stood in firm opposition against those that wanted to start preparing for attacks while the evil bastard was supposedly preparing some super weapon that the Order feared was worse than what he had the last war.

Not much to work with but at least it was something.

Marie should probably expect to be slammed by her association with Dumbledore as well as being the person that first claimed that Voldemort was back. She idly wondered if she should have paid attention to more than just the front page of the _Prophet. _If Skeeters disgusting farce of reporting news was the standard all reporters of wizarding Britain stuck to, it was likely she was being slandered left and right.

Those shameless arse-lickers.

She wondered how Diggory was holding up and if he was being verbally attacked as well, she didn't know him as well as others but she didn't really take him as the sort to be used to dangerous fiascos and near-death experiences. Was he okay after almost getting hit with that Killing Curse? Was he being sneered at as well? Maybe she should send him a letter.

Marie sighed and climbed out of bed, digging through her things to find the thing that would let her talk to Sally-Anne.

Sally-Anne Perks, while an excellent friend and admirable person in many ways, was obsessed with trends and gadgets. She was subscribed to fashion magazines and celebrity gossip rags, and swore by her owl-order catalogs that she had sent in from the States. Marie had an expanded jewelry box full of shiny things that caught Sally-Anne's eye, beauty products she wasn't even sure how to apply, and dozens of gadgets that Annie had forced on her because they were the magical equivalent of muggle technology that _'she just had to have.' _Marie wasn't certain exactly when in her life she would ever need a charm bracelet that stored a shrunken, self-inflating inflatable raft and a set of oars, but it looked cute and casual enough that she didn't mind wearing it.

Those daffy Americans and their inventions.

Digging pass her music-marble player, a camera thingy, and her giant bottle of mood-colour nail polish, Marie pulled out a communication mirror that could disguise itself as a mobile phone. _This _was something she could see the use of, especially if they were trying to blend in out with the muggles. The only down side was that it couldn't make phone calls as well, so it was basically a walkie talkie for those linked together. Sally-Anne had has shoved the mirror down her throat when it was obvious they were going to be good friends and that it was likely to be months before they could talk in person again when Marie went back to Hogwarts.

"Sally-Anne Perks," Marie said, taking care not to be too loud. The image in the mirror clouded over and churned like someone waving their hand through smoke. Marie waited as the smoke thickened and darkened. A guttural groan reached her ears as the mirror turned completely shadowed, though she could make out the faintest of silhouettes.

"Ma-arie?" Sally-Anne asked in a croaky voice, a yawning breaking in between syllables. The silhouette changed shape a bit before Sally-Anne became visible, having just turned on a lamp. The strawberry-blonde was still slack-faced from sleep and was rubbing at her eyes. She peering through slitted eyes out at Marie as her mouth turned down in a frown. "The fuck, you crazy bitch? Do you know what time it is?" She made a show of turning to the clock on her bedside table and scowled even more heavily. "It's tomorrow. The hell do you want?"

"Seriously? Shit, I'm sorry. I forgot that it was late."

"_'Forgot that it was late'_?" Sally-Anne echoed, waking up more. She blinked blearily. "The sodding hell have you been doing that the movements of the earth and moon were deemed irrelevant?"

Marie sighed and climbed back on the bed. "Buckle down, bimbo, 'cos this is a mo-fo of a story."

* * *

**M**arie scowled at her reflection. The damned thing was one of those moving ones and it was flutter about, preening, and being such a right twit that Marie was insulted by it sharing her likeness.

"It's been so long since someone's used me," it told her. "And the last one was a proper dog of a woman. I never talked to her more than I had to."

"Lucky me," Marie muttered sarcastically, trying to figure out of her hair really did look like that or the mirror was just distorting the image. "Stop fooling around and let me have a proper look at myself or I'll move you to an empty room!"

The mirror looked horrified and immediately did as she said.

Today was the day of her hearing and she couldn't wait to give that Mafalda Hopkirk bint a piece of her mind. Trying to expel her for fighting for her life! In what twisted world was that acceptable? What idiot made that a law? If they tried to push that on the public back when magicals still lived among the muggles, there wouldn't be any magicals left today. Stupid ministry. Why was it that governments in general seemed to suck so much?

Marie turned a bit to check her profile and was pleased to note that her outfit was perfectly fit to wear among wizards and muggles. She twirled a bit. The shirt she was wearing was really flattering.

Alice, Sally-Anne's neighbour and the one that warned her about not taking care of her hair, had a closet full to bursting of clothes, many of which she had either grown out of or didn't fit her in the first place. Alice's parents were divorced and her father was a well-to-do business man that tried to make up for not spending much time with her by buying her all the clothes she wanted. Alice was not the sort to be bribed so she got a bit of her own back by being completely ridiculous in her spending. When Sally-Anne dragged Marie over to Alice's house to borrow cooler clothes for Knuckle Bones' music videos, Marie had ended up being given more clothes than she had ever had in her life, ones that actually fit and looked brilliant on her.

She was wearing an outfit Sally-Anne had picked out for her the night before, some fluttery skirted, pretty bloused, gypsy-styled job that she could easily prance through a field of flowers in. She even had one of those flower headbands on to keep her hair in a facade of order and her fringe from flying up and revealing her scar. She looked like she was ready to hug a tree.

"And not at all like someone who would break the law," Sally-Anne had added. "Put on a wide-eyed, dreamy expression and you'd look like a flower child training to become a druidess. Or that you've been smoking some really good weed."

Jokes aside, Marie was hoping to come off as an innocent girl that had been dreadfully wrong by the system. She hoped to maintain that cover and leave the hearing, cleared of her charges before she exploded at the useless toss-pots and started flinging hexes at them with her new wand.

Speaking of her new wand, the occupants of Grimmauld Place had been horrified to learn that her wand had been broken. There had been a great hullabaloo during which Mundungus Fletcher had been turned into a jellyfish, Tonks had tripped over her chair and yank Elphias Doge down with her by his beard, and Marie was cuddled by Mrs. Weasley, Hermione, and three other women because of the trauma of having a broken wand. She thought it was all rather excessive since Ron had broken his wand back in second year and no one tried to console _him _with death by boobs.

It was Sirius that had ended up being the voice of reason (Remus was not in that day), suggesting that Marie use one of the wands in the attic until they could take her out to get a new one. Marie could tell Mrs. Weasley was about to protest her using any of the wands that used to belong members of a known dark family and she quickly agreed before another word could be said.

Marie carried a twelve inch oak wand that looked like it had been sharpened to stab people with for a total of a three days before the war they were waging against the decrepit old house —'cleaning' Snape had called it — was put on a pause and she was escorted by four Order members on top of being disguised as a boy to Ollivander's. Marie was mildly surprised Moody only came up with_two_ escape plans in case Death Eaters had transfigured themselves into wands and were lying in wait just in case Marie showed up.

After getting a butternut and phoenix feather wand (Ollivander had taken out the old core and put it into a fourteen inch butternut blank after giving her a heavily curious look. "A wand for those that shape their own lives; a gambler's wand," he'd said. "And a willow handle to help you better channel that tempestuous magic, I think.") Marie was fully immersed in the cleaning of the Black house. She was tempted to feign a migraine just to get a proper break, but held back on the idea since it felt too dishonest and she really did need an appropriately mind-numbing distraction from worrying over the hearing.

There was a knock at her. "Marie?" came Ron's voice. "Mum says you need to come have breakfast before you go."

She gave herself a final once-over and went to open the door. She gave Ron smile. They were no longer at odds after he had saved her from the murderous ghoul that had haunted the upstairs toilet. "I'm ready. Oh, wait —" She doubled back and snatched up the bag Sally-Anne had given her for her birthday. "Okay, _now _I'm ready."

* * *

**W**hen Marie first joined Knuckle Bones, she thought all she would have to do was sing back up, act sexy when the song called for at, and maybe smack on a tambourine (that was how it was on the TV when Dudley was veggie out for the night.). Instead, she was taught a variety of vocal techniques from different genres of music — Knuckle Bones did covers of all sorts of music — and she was explicitly told that to stay in the band, she had to own the stage. Not the sort to back down when things got tough, Marie threw herself into what they wanted her to be able to do.

Former female vocalists that still hung out taught her how to dance; Marie copied and practiced moves so passionately, she had no time to embarrassed about dancing in public. She would never be a ballerina but she could certainly shake her arse and rock out. Alex, the bassist who was also their main screamer, taught her how to let one rumble right from the back of the throat, and Marie wasn't sure there had ever been anything that made her feel as satisfied and _right _as throwing all her frustration in to a proper growl. She actually took to beat-boxing faster than the rest, having spent years avoiding bullies and entertaining herself by making music with her mouth. A few video tutorials and she was set.

The first time they had performed live, she had been terrified right up until the moment they got on stage. Then she channeled the courage that had her facing down possessed teachers, giant monster, and the judgment of those that expected things from her, the courage that made her worthy of Gryffindor. Needless to say, she didn't falter, and followed through. Hair flying about, limbs stretching and pulling, the room echoing with her voice, Marie had never felt more alive, more in the moment, just _more. _She was so completely, utterly Marie that wasn't sure how she could have been hiding so long.

With a posse of hanger-ons cheering them on in real life while viewers praised them and begged for more online, was it any wonder Marie had come out of that shell and never wanted to go back? Marie took Alex's words to heart as a motto to live by; if you want to be a certain way, you have to take a hold of it and make it your own.

Those words of wisdom came back to her as she walked into Courtroom Ten alone, far earlier than was originally scheduled. She took in the imposing size of the room — it was the place she had visited inside Dumbledore's Pensieve, where she had watched the Lestranges sentenced to life imprisonment in Azkaban — she acknowledged the rows upon rows of robed ministry workers seated in the elevated jury box, and she took note of the poorly concealed look of disdain on the face of the Minister, the person that was the judge presiding over this hearing based on where he stood. It was not at all like the small trial with Madame Bones that she was originally supposed to have.

It was obvious that her hopes of appearing harmless to aid her chances of being cleared would be useless so she discarded that plan before even trying it. Her face stiffened in it's stoniness. She was obviously being set up to lose.

Well, she sure as hell wasn't going down without a fight. She settled herself in the mentality she always had when facing down monsters that meant to take her out. If this trial was to go as she wanted, she had to own it.

The walls were made of dark stone, dimly lit by torches. Empty benches rose on either side of her, but ahead, in the highest benches of all, were many shadowy figures. They had been talking in low

voices, but as the heavy door swung closed behind Marie, an ominous silence fell.

A cold male voice rang across the courtroom. "You're late."

Oh, they wanted to play it that way?

"I came over two hours earlier than was originally scheduled by muggle transport, so didn't receive the owl sent half an hour ago, re-scheduling at the last minute." She sent an unimpressed look in the direction the voice had come. "Twenty minutes notice is pushing it if you want someone to arrive on time."

Bring it, bureaucrats.

"That is not the Wizengamot's fault," said the voice reproachfully.

"Oh, I'm sure."

She could almost feel the man's displeasure. "Take your seat."

Marie dropped her gaze to the chair in the center of the room, the arms of which were covered in chains. She had seen those chains spring to life and bind whoever sat between them. Her shoulders set. If they meant to frighten her into submission, they would need to bring out something better than a chair. Her footsteps echoed loudly as she walked across the stone floor. When she sat herself fully on the seat and made herself comfortable, the chains clinked rather threateningly but did not bind her. These bastards had some nerve.

There were about fifty of them, all, as far as she could see, wearing plum-colored robes with an elaborately worked silver W on the left-hand side of the chest and all staring down their noses at her, some with very austere expressions, others looks of frank curiosity.

In the very middle of the front row sat Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic. Fudge was a portly man who often sported a lime-green bowler hat, though today he had dispensed with it; he had dispensed too with the indulgent smile he had once worn when he spoke to Marie. Showing his true colours at last. A broad, square-jawed witch with very short gray hair sat on Fudge's left; she wore a monocle and looked forbidding. On Fudge's right was another witch, but she was sitting so far back on the bench that her face was in shadow.

At last, Fudge said in a ringing voice, "Disciplinary hearing of the twelfth of August," and Percy (the traitor) began taking notes at once, "into offenses committed under the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery and the International Statute of Secrecy by Marie Lilith Potter, resident at Number Four, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey.

"Interrogators: Cornelius Oswald Fudge, Minister of Magic; Amelia Susan Bones, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement; Dolores Jane Umbridge, Senior Undersecretary to the Minister. Court Scribe, Percival Ignatius Weasley —"

"— Witness for the defense, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore," said a quiet voice from behind Marie, who nearly jumped from her seat in shock. She turned in her seat and looked on disbelievingly.

Dumbledore was striding serenely across the room wearing long midnight-blue robes and a perfectly calm expression. His long silver beard and hair gleamed in the torchlight as he drew level with Marie and looked up at Fudge through the half-moon spectacles that rested halfway down his very crooked nose.

The members of the Wizengamot were muttering. All eyes were now on Dumbledore. A few looked annoyed, others slightly frightened; two elderly witches in the back row, however, raised their hands and waved in welcome.

Marie felt a tangled knot of emotions at seeing Dumbledore. She couldn't help but feel more hopeful with him there even though she wanted to stomp up to him and give him proper punch in the gut as well. As it was, she could only stare with a slightly unhappy look on her face. Let the spectators make of that as they wanted.

Dumbledore then proceeded say the most bewildering things and behave as if they were all just sitting down for nice tea, thoroughly discombobulating the Minister until he could barely finish a sentence.

When he finally managed to pull himself together, Fudge shuffled his notes and said, "Yes. Well, then. So. The charges. Yes."

He extricated a piece of parchment from the pile before him, took a deep breath, and read, "The charges against the accused are as follows: That she did knowingly, deliberately, and in full awareness of the illegality of her actions, having received a previous written warning from the Ministry of Magic on a similar charge, produce a Patronus Charm in a Muggle-inhabited area, in the presence of a Muggle, on August the second at twenty-three minutes past nine, which constitutes an offense under paragraph C of the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery, 1875, and also under section thirteen of the International Confederation of Wizards' Statute of Secrecy.

"You are Marie Lilith Potter, of Number Four, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey?" Fudge said, glaring at Marie over the top of his parchment.

"Yes," she said. Why the bloody hell else would she be there if she wasn't?

"You received an official warning from the Ministry for using illegal magic three years ago, did you not?"

"Yes, but —"

"And yet you conjured a Patronus on the night of the second of August?" said Fudge.

"Yes," said Marie, "but —"

"Knowing that you are not permitted to use magic outside school while you are under the age of seventeen?"

"Yes, sir, but —"

"Knowing that you were in an area full of Muggles?"

"Yes —"

"Fully aware that you were in close proximity to a Muggle at the time?"

"_Yes,_" Marie confirmed, some of her irritation leaking through. She wanted to strangle him! Couldn't he shut up long enough for someone else to get a sodding word in edgewise? "but I only used it because we were —"

The witch with the monocle on Fudge's left cut across him in a booming voice. "You produced a fully fledged Patronus?"

"Yes," said Marie, "because —"

"A corporeal Patronus?"

The fuck was wrong with these people? "Yes, ma'am, I did."

"Your Patronus had a clearly defined form? I mean to say, it was more than vapor or smoke?"

"Yes," said Marie, feeling extremely impatient. "it's a stag, it's always a stag."

"Always?" boomed Madam Bones. "You have produced a Patronus before now?"

"Yes," said Marie, "I've been doing it for over a year —"

"And you are fifteen years old?"

"Yes, and —"

"You learned this at school?"

Sodding. Bleeding. Motherfucking. Cuntmunching. Hell. She completely stilled her face so her fury would not be painted across her face. "Yes, Professor Lupin taught me in my third year, because of the —"

"Impressive," said Madam Bones, staring down at her, "a true Patronus at that age . . . very impressive indeed."

_ARGH! _She hated these people!

Some of the wizards and witches around her were muttering again; a few nodded, but others were frowning and shaking their heads.

"It's not a question of how impressive the magic was," said Fudge in a testy voice. "In fact, the more impressive the worse it is, I would have thought, given that the girl did it in plain view of a Muggle!"

"I did it because of the dementors!" she said loudly, before anyone could interrupt her again. "Why in Merlin's name else would I do it?"

She had expected more muttering, but the silence that fell seemed to be somehow denser than before.

"Dementors?" said Madam Bones after a moment, raising her thick eyebrows so that her monocle looked in danger of falling out. "What do you mean, girl?"

"I mean there were two dementors down that alleyway and they went for me and my cousin!"

"Ah," said Fudge again, smirking unpleasantly as he looked around at the Wizengamot, as though inviting them to share the joke. "Yes. Yes, I thought we'd be hearing something like this."

"Dementors in Little Whinging?" Madam Bones said in tones of great surprise. "I don't understand —"

"Don't you, Amelia?" said Fudge, still smirking. "Let me explain. She's been thinking it through and decided dementors would make a very nice little cover story, very nice indeed. Muggles can't see dementors, can they, girl? Highly convenient, highly convenient . . . so it's just your word and no witnesses —"

She completely had it with this man. "Excuse me, sir. I'm not very familiar with the justice system here, but where _I'm_ from, we generally allow the accused to give their side of the story without interruption before we go passing judgment on the situation. I would have thought you would want to know my reasons for casting the magic that you say I did, especially since this is supposedly a trial for my breaking the _Reasonable _Restriction ofUnderage Sorcery."

The mutters rose up again but Marie would not be cowed. She fixed her most disapproving look on her face and continued. "There were two of them, coming from opposite ends of the alley, everything went dark and cold and my cousin ran for it —"

"Enough, enough!" said Fudge with a very supercilious look on his face. "I'm sorry to interrupt what I'm sure would have been a very well-rehearsed story —"

"Sir, I'm not sure what you think I do with my life, but let me assure you, not once have I ever thought to myself, _'Gee, I wonder what I should do next to get myself in expulsion-worthy trouble? Oh, I know! I should do something illegal and then I'll come up with an outrageous lie just for shits and giggles.'_" More mutters at her language. Marie painted an expression that obviously questioned his intelligence. "There are better things to do, sir, like watch grass grow. If wanted to lie to your face and get away with it, I wouldn't choose _'I got attacked by dementors'_ as my line. I would say _'that lime-green hat you always wear certainly looks fetching on you, sir.'_"

Fudge was struck mute by outrage that he could only gape at her. Marie eyeballed him for a few seconds before turning to Madam Bones. "May I assume that _you,_ Madam, will listen to the entire account before making judgment?"

Madam Bones wore an expression of amusement mixed with disapproval. "I suppose I will have to before you offend more Wizengamot members than you already have."

"Thank you, ma'am. But before I start, I was wondering if you could tell me why I'm having a hearing at all. I was told that I would get one after my second offense, but if you count this one, it would only be my first."

Fudge came back to life at this. He snatched up a page from his notes at waved it at her furiously. "I have right here the confirmation that you produced a Hover Charm three years ago, also in the presence of muggles! Are you trying to worm your way out of that as well?"

"I want to clear myself of that charge as well, yes, I do, sir."

"This is highly irregular," Madam Bones said, readjusting her monocle. "But if this was the standard hearing I normally host in my office, I would allow it. I see no reason why it shouldn't be allowed now."

The Minister spluttered at Madam Bones for a moment before, glaring back down at Marie. "Well, then, if you're so set on telling your tall tale, let's hear it then!"

Marie leaned back in her chair and started talking. "I got a letter before my second year about a Hover Charm in the presence of muggles, but I'll tell you right now that wasn't me. A house elf came to me, telling me about a plot to kill me and how it wanted me to stay away from Hogwarts —"

"What nonsense is this?" Fudge cut it, a derisive sneer on his face.

"I'll swear an oath that I'm telling the truth!" Marie countered. "Right here, right now, on my magic! I'll do it!"

There was a heavy silence before everyone started talking all that once. Madam Bones banged her gavel, looking aggrieved, and cried, "Order in the court!" She looked seriously down at where Marie sat with her arms crossed. "Do you understand the severity of what you're offering? If you misspeak while under oath, you'll be left less than a squib."

"I understand perfectly and I'm not bothered in the least bit because _I'm not lying._" The last bit was directed at the puffed up minister. The two engaged in a brief stare-down before Madam Bones coughed to get their attention and nodded at Marie to continue.

"May I swear the oath now?"

"As you please."

Marie pulled out her wand and pointed it at the ceiling. "I swear on my magic that what I will say today in front of this assembly will be what I know and believe to be true. So mote it be." She pointed the wand down at the ground but kept it in her hand as she continued. "As I was saying, a house elf came and tried to keep me away from school and it got upset when I said that I wasn't going to stay away. The little beast then told me that it would _make me _stay away and then ran downstairs to terrorize my muggle relatives and their guests. It somehow knew that any magic it did would be taken as my fault, and it was absolutely right."

Marie pointed the wand up again and whispered, "_Lumos._"

The light's existence spoke plainly for itself.

There was an awkward silence in which anyone that tried to speak against her knew perfectly well that to do so was to folly. Minister Fudge turned red in embarrassment and frustration.

Seeing the look on the minister's face brought to mind the only other thing he could try to pin on her, and she quickly spoke to cut that route off from him as well.

"The only other time I can think of that might've been taken as me breaking the Restriction was that time after Sirius Black broke out of prison." She pasted a saccharine smile on her face. "You remember, right, Minister? You were there at the Cauldron to meet me when I got there. I had accidentally inflated my aunt like a balloon, but that had somehow been taken as underage magic by you, though you generously offered to over look it.."

"Accidentally inflated your aunt," Madam Bones echoed, a look of bewilderment on her face. "This was back two years ago when Black escaped? You were thirteen, weren't you? That's a rather old for accidental magic."

Marie shrugged. "I never really grew out of it. I gave my uncle a rather fierce shock a few weeks ago when he grabbed my shoulder suddenly. Any ways, blowing up my aunt. I didn't have my wand in my hand when it happened — didn't have my wand on me the time with the time house elf either — nor did I mean for it to happen, so wouldn't that be accidental magic?"

She paused to scan the jury and was encouraged by the faces she saw that looked sympathetic and in agreement with her. Looked like she had won over some supporters with her oath. She smiled a small but sincere small, getting a few back.

"So, by my reckoning," Marie said to Madam Bones. "I'll have to say that this would be my _first_ offense — that is, if it wasn't perfectly reasonable for me to defend myself since both my cousin and I were being attacked, and if not for the fact that _my wand was broken _before the magic I'm being accused of using happened."

"Start from the beginning," the older lady said sharply, interest evident in her eyes.

"My cousin and I had been walking home from the park," said Marie. "It was sometime in the evening and the streetlamps had already come on. We were passing through a tunnel when everything went dark and it started getting cold. My cousin and I don't usually get along so he thought _I_ was doing it, so he pushed me and tried to run away. I didn't see how far he got before the dementor caught him, but I'm pretty sure he actually ran right at it.

"He knock my wand from my hand when he pushed me so I was freaking out. I didn't know what else to do so I called out a light-making spell. Shockingly, my wand lit up, and I was about to run to pick it up when Dudley ran at the light and managed to break my wand when he fell on it."

"Your wand lit even though you were not touching it?" Madam Bones asked her to confirm when Marie paused to take a breath.

"Yes, ma'am. It was at least five feet away."

"Irregular," the woman muttered. "Continue."

"Well, with my wand broken, there wasn't much I could do when the second dementor came at me. I was kicking and flailing about a bit since I've always been sensitive dementors before I figured since I managed to light my wand without it in my hand, I might as well try a Patronus Charm.

"I was keyed up so I suppose adrenaline had something to do with it but I managed a whisp that made the dementor slow. I was overjoyed that it had actually worked and it only took my third attempt at it for my usual full Patronus to manifest. It took care of the dementor right on top of me while I went to see to Dudley.

"I wasn't thinking straight," Marie admitted, letting a bit of chagrin leak into her tone and she smiled sheepishly up at the jury. "I saw the thing had pried Dudley's arms away from his face — I had warned him earlier that he needed to keep his mouth shut — and that his face was already blurring so I — well, my Patronus was still caught up with the other dementor so I charged at the one on top of my cousin and tackled it to the ground."

"You . . . you _tackled _a dementor?" Madam Bones echoed incredulously.

"I didn't have any other way of getting it away from Dudley," Marie said. shrugging a bit. "I think it tried to Kiss me as well — there was this weird _pulling _and it hurt like hell — but I gave it a couple punches to the face so it didn't get the chance. My Patronus came then and it finally chased off the bloody monster."

There was a moment of disbelieving silence. "Ms. Potter," Madam Bones finally said, plucking the monocle from her eye and cleaning it. "Never have I heard such a fantastical tale. If it weren't for your oath, I'm not sure if I would believe you."

"Why should we believe it?" said another voice suddenly. The woman that had previously been sitting in the shadows next to the Minister leaned forward. She was an unattractive woman, her face too wide and square as well as unpleasantly plump. "The girl swore that what she tells us is what she knows and _believes _to be true, but it's possible that she's mistaken in her beliefs.

"After all," she added in a simpering tone. "Dementors are under Ministry control; why would they be out in Muggle England? Isn't it more likely that the girl mistook some muggle hooligans as dementors and over-reacted?"

"That's right!" Fudge agreed. He glared nastily at Marie. "Who's to say they weren't just muggles in costumes? We have only your word and no witnesses —"

The Minister fell silent when Dumbledore cleared his throat. Marie felt irritated at the sound. She had thought he had come to be moral support or whatever since he hadn't said a word since he got there. If he was actually there to help why hadn't he said anything sooner?

"We do, in fact, have a witness to the presence of dementors in that alleyway," he said without looking at Marie. "Other than Dudley Dursley, I mean."

It was then that Mrs. Figg was brought in and Marie was further bothered by the fact that the woman proved to be a shoddy witness even though she _had _seen most of it. She could have at least remembered to something other than house slippers when she came to testify. And her description! Marie didn't think she had a way with words or anything but 'big and wearing cloaks' didn't at all discourage the toad woman's comment of the dementors possibly being local thugs.

It was only through Madam Bones' uncompromising fairness that Mrs. Figg wasn't dismissed entirely as a witness.

"Big and wearing cloaks." The monocled woman repeated coolly as Fudge snorted derisively. "I see. Anything else?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Figg. "I felt them. Everything went cold, and this was a very warm summer's night, mark you. And I felt . . . as though all happiness had gone from the world . . . and I remembered . . . dreadful things. . . ."

Praise the powers the be, at least she didn't end up sounding ever more ridiculous than she had. She finished up with a summary of the attack that mirrored what Marie had said, sounding just as incredulous as she had before when she confirmed that Marie had physically attacked the monster that was on Dudley.

It was almost word for word exactly what Marie had described and it was obvious that Fudge was no longer sure of his position nor was he happy about it.

"But it's ridiculous!" He complained. "They are under Ministry control; why would dementors go to Little Whinging? It's simply impossible!"

Impossible. Exactly as he had said when she had told him that Voldemort had returned. This was the sort of man that would deny a person dying right in front of him if the death would inconvenience him.

"Impossible, you say?" Marie said with a derisive frown on her face. "Tell that to my cousin who almost got Kissed! I'm sure he'd love to hear all about how it's simply impossible that his soul was almost stolen because dementors are under Ministry control!" A thought occurred to her and her eyes narrowed. Would they —? Maybe they would; Fudge was proving himself to be a man that had thing dealt with privately and then swept under the rug.

Marie continued. "Since you _insist_ that they wouldn't do anything with Ministry approval, maybe I should ask then why the Ministry sent a pair of dementors to a muggle area that I just so happen to live in? To the exact street I just so happen to live on?"

Fudge looked alarmed and then nervous by the contemplative looks sent his way. "Here now, girl, there's need to start making outlandish claims!"

"_I'm _making outlandish claims? _I _am not the one that accused someone of faking a dementor attack to get attention."

"While Marie may be phrasing it indelicately," Dumbledore said, adding onto the conversation. "If it is true that the dementors are taking orders only from the Ministry of Magic, and it is also true that two dementors attacked Marie and her cousin a week ago, then it follows logically that somebody at the Ministry might have ordered the attacks." His tone was pure levity. "Of course, these particular dementors may have been outside Ministry control —"

"There are no dementors outside Ministry control!" snapped Fudge, who had turned brick red.

Dumbledore inclined his head in a little bow. "Then undoubtedly the Ministry will be making a full inquiry into why two dementors were so very far from Azkaban and why they attacked without authorization."

"It is not for you to decide what the Ministry of Magic does or does not do, Dumbledore!" snapped Fudge, now a shade of magenta of which Uncle Vernon would have been proud. the

Dear lord, the grandstanding was getting old. Who was he trying to impress?

"Of course it isn't," said Dumbledore mildly. "I was merely expressing my confidence that this matter will not go uninvestigated."

He glanced at Madam Bones, who readjusted her monocle and stared back at him, frowning slightly.

"I would remind everybody that the behavior of these dementors, if indeed they are not figments of this girl's imagination, is not the subject of this hearing!" said Fudge. "We are here to examine Marie Potter's offenses under the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery!"

"I'd say the fact that I needed to perform underage magic to fight of those dementors makes them a perfect topic for this hearing," Marie said, leaning forward in her seat. "And since fighting off a deadly threat is within the limits of using underage magic, I'd say that I _haven't _violated the Decree, so no laws were broken."

Fudge lost it then. It seemed being stood up to by a teenage girl was too much for him. An ink bottle was knocked over when he leaned over his podium violently. He snarled savagely at her, "Laws can be changed!"

"But should they be changed?" Marie shot back. "Are you saying that you're willing to change laws that have proven to be effective and fair just to suit your own purposes? What of they people you're meant to be representing? Serve and protect and all that."

Dumbledore laid a pacifying hand on her shoulder. Marie let him ease her back into her seat as he began talking his way to finish up the hearing and in her favour. Suffice to say only Fudge and his ilk voted against her.

As Dumbledore swept out of the room as soon as the vote was finished, Marie stood and surveyed the jury, paying especial attention to those that had voted against her. She made to leave but couldn't help but let fly a parting shot.

"Is it common for the entire Wizengamot to be called together for a case of underage magic? You would think that the supreme judicial body that presides over our country would be too busy with more important matters — you know, like serial killers or organized crime — to clear their schedules for such a small thing. It's a wonder anything gets done if every little trial get the attention of the full body. You all must be terribly efficient at your jobs."


End file.
